Researchers Unveil Smallest Atomic Clock Yet: Scientists have manufactured the world's smallest atomic clock, with inner machinery about the size of a grain of rice.
Link Zombie Infection Generator: Oldie but goodie. I like epidemiology JavaApplets. Zombies are grey, humans are pink and panicked humans are bright pink. The rest is georgeromeroesque tragedy... especially if two or three bright dots are trapped in a one way street by a grey dot...
Link Expressionism and Insanity: As Thomas Röske explains, a recent exhibition in Germany shows the impact of the idea of insanity on Expressionist art.
Link Makrolab is an experimental science/art laboratory, equipped to accommodate artists, scientists, tactical media workers and creators and provides them with tools and means for their joint independent progressive work. People in the Makrolab do research primarily in the fields of telecommunicatons, weather systems and migrations.
Link Scientists Fear New Ebola Outbreak May Explain Sudden Gorilla Disappearance: Scientists fear that emerging evidence may suggest a new outbreak of the Ebola virus, which, in addition to threatening human lives, would threaten tens of thousands of great apes -- in this case gorillas and chimpanzees -- in the Republic of Congo.
Link Kingdom: You may have come across the name Lars von Trier in connection with his activities as a filmmaker. The Danish director has made movies like "Dancer in the Dark" (with Björk) or "Dogville" (with Nicole Kidman). I'd like to seize the opportunity to present one of my all-time favourite TV series: "Kingdom". Lars von Trier directed the extraordinary series (1994-1997) and if you haven't seen it yet you should definitely get your hands on it - trust me! "Kingdom" has a unique look and a unique blend of horror and humour. A crossover of hospital series, ghost story, experimental film and smouldering comedy. Actually, I'm unhappy with the term "crossover", but "mixture", "hybrid" or "crossbreed" don't work either. I'm not sure what kind of genre Lars von Trier created with this work but I disagree with the common reflex to compare it to Lynch's "Twin Peaks". Both concepts are "outsiderish" or "strange" on a mass market level, but they are - in my humble opinion - different in almost any way. What more can I tell you? Expect malpractice suits and seances, severed heads and Volvos, liver transplants and divining rods, a back-stabbing Swedish neuroscientist and a female doctor giving birth to Mister Udo Kier. Provocative, entertaining, witty. Period.
Kingdom I (DVD): Link Kingdom II (DVD): Link Orphan Drift: An artist group active in London and Oslo. Currently working on a mixture of source codes and poetry.
>> alien zone- future wants contagious with other dimensions. _ streched light _ mayan calender speed within it is . _pro ducing detail _ vandal to time calender without clock _ . _ zoo(hiatus)] > FAMA; 2p f a-é.chil [pl.pl.play] <> [wa.war.ar][zone][#grey][connect pCCC] Special_Fx: #_$2VOW.ght [third vi94] [c-funny teeth] [.tmp if.txt][invisible] <<
(via rebel:art) Link The Rorschach Inkblot Test, Fortune Tellers, and Cold Reading: An excerpt from "What's Wrong With the Rorschach?" published on the 'Skeptical Inquirer' site.
Link Mary Poppins - Practical Citizenship for Toddlers: Jonathan Newquist on how Mary Poppins corrupts the minds of our good capitalist youth.
Link Is it a meteor from Mars or excrement from earthlings? The only way to tell is to have an expert in meteors examine the rock but the couple has not had it examined professionally.
Link Beagle 2 bites back: Quote: "The Beagle 2 mission team has released its own report about what went wrong with the ill-fated Mars lander. The European Space Agency (ESA) reviewed the mission earlier this year and blamed poor management of funds for the failure. But the UK team concludes that the most likely cause of Beagle 2's demise was the fact that the planet's atmosphere turned out to be thinner than expected, so the craft was unable to brake hard enough to land safely."
Link Down the rabbit-hole... Or, How Dick Cheney got away with $35 million right before the government launched a probe into Halliburton. Article by Jason Leopold.
Link Sartre & Peanuts: Nathan Radke claims that Charlie Brown is an existentialist. (via Philosophy Now)
Link 9-11 remembrance! This is a very .. uhm ... interesting disaster tribute. a) It's very ... let's say "frivolous". And b) there seems to be an algebraic problem: "By the time you read this it will be September 11, 2003 and it will be the one year anniversary of the attack on America [...]"
Link Bellymasks? Quote: "A bellymask is an heirloom sculpture created right on your pregnant torso in a simple one-hour process. Made of plaster gauze, it is an exact replica of your pregnant form."
Link Viruses On The Attack: Revealing Visuals Show Details Of A Common Mechanism For Infection: Using a combination of imaging techniques, researchers have determined the mechanics that allow some viruses to invade cells by piercing their outer membranes and digesting their cell walls. The researchers combined their findings with earlier studies to create a near-complete scenario for that form of viral assault.
Link WIMP (Windows Interface Manipulation Program) is a program for creating full-screen visual animations synchronized with sound in real time. WIMP utilizes - and exploits - the GUI of the Windows operating system. WIMP can be used as a VJ tool, a screensaver, a cool grafix generator or as a piece of conceptual art. Clever, elegant, ironic software by Victor Laskin and Alexei Shulgin.
Link Portraits of Taliban: A collection of astounding portraits of Taliban by Afghan photographers in Kandahar after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2002. Considering Taliban interpretation of Islamic rules, photography was illegal. But when passport photography was reallowed Taliban would ask for some pictures, secretly taken in the backroom of the studio.
Link Candid Metallica creates angst-filled 'Monster': Quote: >>After nuking the airwaves with Frayed Ends of Sanity and Crash Course in Brain Surgery, the world's heaviest-metal band isn't likely to shock its fans with a backstage documentary. [...] The typical rock film puts these people on a pedestal and glorifies rock 'n' roll," Berlinger says. "Our film is about the human wreckage that results from the incompleteness people feel when they are treated as icons. It demystifies the mythology of rock stars, and of this band in particular. If Metallica fans reject this movie, we're in trouble. We're stripping their heroes, the toughest of the tough guys, the guys who sing about Armageddon.<<
Link Tribe without names for numbers cannot count: mazon study fuels debate on whether the concept of numbers is innate.
Link Scenes from a Bigfoot Conference: Article by Rob Boston, published on the CSICOP page. My favourite paragraph: »Johnson claimed that in quantum physics, electrons do not obey the classical laws of physics. They can, for example, move through barriers, he said. When Bigfoot is in this quantum state, Johnson opined, the creature has no mass or weight and is "just a wave." Bigfoot's quantum nature, Johnson told attendees, may explain the lack of clear photos of the beast. "He probably communicates with cameras," Johnson said. "He knows when they are around. He won't let you take a picture."«
Link Index on Censorship was founded in 1972 by Stephen Spender with the goal to protect the basic human right of free expression. Quote: "For the past 31 years, Index has reported on censorship issues from all over the world and has added to the debates on those issues. In addition to the analysis, reportage and interviews, each Index contains a country by country list of free speech violations. These lists remain as extensive today as they were in the early days of Index."
Link The Increasingly Official Mary Midgley Webpage: Really nice site about the work of philosopher Mary Midgley. I'd like to quote Nick Matzke, the site's editor: "Whether the issue is postmodernism, science, freedom, rights, the relation of biology to the rest of life, the importance of obscure dead white men (or women, or chimpanzees, or dolphins, etc.), the conflict between the social and natural sciences, animals, the relation between facts and values, or thinking and emotions, or human nature and morality, or a hundred other things, Midgley has a fresh, readable, good-humored, well-thought out and very nearly always convincing position that avoids easy answers and tries to be non-reductive and fair to various perspectives without falling into the relativist mud of attributing everything to perspective."
Link An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King by Douglas Valentine. "Bill Pepper's book, An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King (Verso, 2003), is a book whose time has come. It is required reading for anyone interested in how they illegitimate Bush regime will wield its ill-gotten power, not against Iraq, but against dissenters here in America."
Link A Dictionary of Units of Measurement: A nice collection. The magnificent world of "tetrads", "farthingdales" and "lippies". Did you know that "nox" was a unit of (low) illumination used in Germany during World War II to describe permitted levels of lighting during air raids? Or that we ought not need longer distance units than yottameters, because the radius of the observable universe is only about 200 of them? Perfect.
Link Karin Frank: The themes that Austrian sculptural artist Karin Frank deals with are by no means scandalous: there is a lot of shitting, mountains, a lot of lovemaking, there are portrayals. But be careful: Freudian slippery when wet.
Link Matrix Reloaded Coat? Minority Report Leather Jacket? At Boutique.com ("Our individual client includes artist like Steven King, USA national fingerstyle guitar champion" // "This site is dedicated to Guru Maharaj and Om Sridi Sairam") you can have such stuff tailored. "As avid matrix fans ourselves we have decided to offer our services to fellow fans who are looking for the high quality, highly detailed and accurate matrix reloaded coat not usually found in stores."
Link Coin Operated: Jonah Brucker-Cohen works as a Research Fellow in the Human Connectedness Group at Media Lab Europe in Dublin, Ireland. His artistic focus is on subverting existing relationships to human/networked interfaces by building new real-world inputs to networks, redefining how information is used and disseminated, and shifting virtual processes into physical forms through networked devices and experiences.
An example? In 2002 he developed the interactive data sculpture StreamingMedia. The sculpture employs a new Internet protocol that uses water to transmit information between computers. H2O/IP functions in a similar way as TCP/IP but focuses on the inherent viscous properties of water that are not present in traditional packet networks.
Have a look at Jonah’s project homepage Coin Operated, there are dozens of interesting experiments.
Link Capsaicin is the chemical found in peppers which causes a burning sensation. In an attempt to make products hotter than plain peppers, scientists use a process to extract capsaicin from the rest of the pepper. The heat of capsaicin is measured in Scoville Units. Scoville Unit Measuring was invented in 1912 by Wilbur L. Scoville, a pharmacologist of the Parke-Davis Company. It is a measurement that involves adding sugar to a solution until one can no longer taste the pepper.
Jalapeno peppers measure around 5,000 units. The hottest pepper ever tested, the Red Savina, tested at 577,000 units. Pure capsaicin is estimated at around 16 million units.
You want something like that on your burger? Really? You asked for it...
Link Grüßt uns're Berge (Greet our mountains): Maybe this short video is Abbott’s classic math/philosophy novel "Flatland" transformed into an alpine tourist saga of climbing up a mountain and falling down - or maybe not. Anyway, it is a delightful 2-D experiment by the German artists and filmmakers Sven Knauth and Stephan Schulz.
Link / Real Video Billy Tipton (1914-1989) was a saxophone player who had his own band and later his own music agency. He got married, adopted three boys. Tipton eked out a living in the USA during the depression and in the war and post-war years. He was good, but never got famous. He did something quite normal: he traveled and played with a band, managing both his life and being a professional musician. Billy Tipton only made the worldwide headlines through his death: the body of the musician and agency operator was the body of a normally developed 75-year-old woman.
'Suits me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton' by Diane Wood Middlebrook tells the true story of an extraordinary life.
Link Nanotech extracts benefits for oil industry: Nanotechnology might be a buzzword in many boardrooms or business plans, but some of its pioneering processes are old hat to the oil industry.
Link Beyond the Horizon of Events: "War rooms in pop culture or: the »delocalized« concept of rule in negative imperialism" by Krystian Woznicki. Published in the Viennese political art magazine Springerin.
Link Sex Pheromone Blocked In Bug: Science can put a dent in the sex life of a scarab beetle by blocking its ability to pick up female scent, according to Walter Leal, professor of entomology at UC Davis. The research could eventually lead to methods to control insect pests without affecting harmless or beneficial insects.
Link Green Tide: Global Warming as a Weapon of Mass Destruction - by Bruce E. Johansen. "Lord Peter Levene, board chair of Lloyd’s of London, says that terrorism is not the insurance industry’s biggest worry, despite the fact that his company was the largest single insurer of the World Trade Center. Levene says that Lloyd’s, like other large international insurance companies, is bracing for an increase in weather disasters related to global warming. [...]"
Link Scepticism Over Academic's Atlantis Theory: Dr. Ulf Erlingsson, who believes Ireland is the ancient land of Atlantis, flew into Dublin today amid a storm of controversy about his theories.
Link Japanese deploy solar sails: Article by Mark Peplow. Quote: "Two solar sails have been successfully launched and floated briefly through space before burning up as they re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. The mission, run by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), aimed to test whether the intricately folded structures would unfurl after launch. It is a promising demonstration of a technology that, some space scientists argue, is our best hope for propelling spacecraft to the stars."
Link Who Owns The Rules Of War? Kenneth Anderson (law professor at American University and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University) does his best to answer this.
Link Technical Machines and Evolution by Belinda Barnet. "How does one tell the story of a machine? Can we say that technical machines have their own genealogies, their own evolutionary dynamic? The technical artifact constitutes a series of objects, a lineage or a line. At a cursory level, we can see this in the fact that technical machines come in generations; they adapt and adopt characteristics over time, "one suppressing the other as it becomes obsolete." So are we to understand this dynamic from a biological, a zoological or a sociological perspective?"
Link UC Riverside Researcher Takes Snapshots Of The Movement Of Molecules In A Billionth Of A Second: A team of researchers including University of California, Riverside Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Ludwig Bartels has developed a technique to take extremely fast snapshots of molecular and atomic movement. The development is considered a significant advance in surface science, the study of chemical reactions taking place on the surface of solids.
Link Chinese Ghost Stories: An introduction by Daniel O'Brien. Quote: "Welcome to the strange and wonderful world of Hong Kong horror movies, filled to bursting with flying ghosts, hopping vampires, seductive spirits, tree demons, evil sorcerers, living skeletons, possessed limbs and giant predatory tongues. Tsui Hark’s A Chinese Ghost Story in 1987 gave many Western viewers their first taste of supernatural thrills — Oriental style — yet the film was a comparatively late entry in a well-established genre. From Sammo Hung’s ground-breaking Spooky Encounters to King Hu’s valedictory Painted Skin, the 1980s Hong Kong ghost film cycle produced a stylish and distinctive body of work that compares with the best of Universal and Hammer."
Link The male anglerfish and his life as a sexual parasite: "Finding a mate in the dark depths of the ocean is a pretty tough job! So what does a male anglerfish do when he finds a mate? He never lets her go! The male lives as a parasite on the body of the much larger female, taking his food from her bloodstream. In the time their bodies fuse together, forming a sort of two body hermaphrodite. Although this arrangement primarily benefits the male, it also frees both sexes from constantly seeking out new breeding partners whenever it is time to mate. How do they find each other in the darkness? Although at one time it was thought that each lure was designed to attract special prey, it now appears that the unique shape has evolved to attract a male of the same species who recognizes his future mate by her lure." I loooove evolution. (Thanks, Maeks!)
Link 1 Link 2 A Messenger To Mercury: Quote: "A Delta 2 rocket left Earth in spectacular fashion in the early morning of Aug. 3, 2004, sending a NASA spacecraft on a winding journey through the inner solar system. Final destination: Mercury. Called Messenger, the $427 million probe will travel for 6-1/2 years before reaching the planet closest to the sun. Although Mercury can get as close as 50 million miles from Earth, Messenger will have to travel almost 5 billion miles to enter orbit around the scorched planet."
Link Hiroshima Story: Article by Tom Engelhardt. Intro: >Even though we promptly dubbed the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York City "Ground Zero" -- once a term reserved for an atomic blast -- Americans have never really come to grips either with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the nuclear age they ushered in. There can be no question that, as the big bang that might end it all, the atomic bomb haunted Cold War America. In those years, while the young watched endless versions of nuclear disaster transmuted into B-horror films, the grown-ups who ran our world went on a vast shopping spree for world-ending weaponry, building nuclear arsenals that grew into the tens of thousands of weapons. When the Cold War finally ended with the Soviet Union's quite peaceful collapse, however, a nuclear "peace dividend" never quite arrived. The arsenals of the former superpower adversaries remained quietly in place, drawn down but strangely untouched, awaiting a new mission, while just beyond sight, the knowledge of the making of such weapons spread to other countries ready to launch their own threatening mini-cold wars."
Link Questions That Plague Physics: A Conversation with Lawrence M. Krauss: Intro: >Lawrence M. Krauss is a man of many opinions. One is that string theory has failed to shed light on the nature of dark energy. Chair of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University, Lawrence M. Krauss is famed in the research community for his prescient suggestion that a still mysterious entity called dark energy might be the key to understanding the beginnings of the universe. He is also an outspoken social critic and in February was among 60 prominent scientists who signed a letter entitled "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking," complaining of the Bush administration's misuse of science. The public, though, might know him best as an op-ed writer and author of books with mass appeal. His 1995 work, The Physics of Star Trek, became a best-seller, translated into 15 languages. He is now finishing his seventh popular title, Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions, which he describes as "an exploration of our long-standing literary, artistic and scientific love affair with the idea that there are hidden universes out there." Krauss recently discussed his many scientific and social passions with writer Claudia Dreifus.<
Link Interview with Peter Barratt, Head of Communication for the Beagle 2 mission to Mars: The ill-fated Beagle 2 mission to find life on Mars was one part of a cluster of missions most of which have been very successful. The Beagle 2 project, which was led by Colin Pillinger, failed following the loss of the spacecraft after it was released towards the planet’s surface. The publicity surrounding the project, on the other hand, has been a great success and in terms of communicating the science, as well as generating interest amongst the public, it has been nothing short of a public relations triumph. The person behind the publicity machine was Peter Barratt, who as Head of Communication for the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) was drafted in to take charge of the publicity for the project. Here, Nigel Sanitt interviews Peter Barratt during the Royal Society meeting on 8th March.
Link Factsheet 5: You may already know the meta-zine Factsheet 5. But if not ... I highly recommend this project. "Factsheet 5 is a comprehensive guide to zines and alternative publications. Each large issue will be packed with hundreds of reviews of independent and unusual publications. Every issue of Factsheet 5 will catalog and review an abundance of zines – complete with price, critical reviews, and ordering information. Additionally, it will include informative articles on zine culture, independent publishing, lively columns, interviews with self-publishers, and an extensive news section."
Link Starship Modeler is the complete information resource for the science fiction, factual space, fantasy, mecha and anime scale model builder.
Link Celebs Missing Fingers: "An accident with an axe, a childhood prank gone haywire, canteloupe-carving carelessness -- whatever the reason, many people end up making their mark in life while missing a finger or two. Here are some folks who've managed to get ahead with missing or damaged digits."
Link Computers and the Environment: Understanding and Managing their impacts: A new book by Eric Williams and Ruediger Kuehr deals with the eco-problems of the PC: "What are the environmental impacts associated with personal computers? How should we manufacture, buy, use and dispose of them so as to reduce these impacts?"
Link Rethinking psychoanalysis: Really nice RPh-interview with Jean Laplanche. "Jean Laplanche is the most original and philosophically informed psychoanalytic theorist of his day. Setting out from a critical reconstruction of Freud's terminology, he has developed a systematic rethinking of psychoanalytic metapsychology under the heading of a 'general theory of seduction'."
Link Keep Warm This Winter - Make Trouble: Richard Cabut (3AM Magazine) interviews Jamie Reid, the self-styled "socialist druid" who turned the Sex Pistols into an artwork. Quote: "The work bubbles, its cells weaving freely in and out of each other like the organism they compose. The wry and decompressed attitude towards imagery and abstraction exhibits witty unpretentiousness taken to the point of revelation. It moves beyond the living margins, zooming right into a floating, shimmering, half-remembered dreamworld. A murmur trembling on verge of coherence. Perfect for those desperate for sensation in the monochromatic, decontextualised city. Here, everything smells sad and good like it does after a heavy rain. You can't put a price on this sort of stuff."
Link New book identifies Ireland as Atlantis: A new book investigating the myth of Atlantis says that the mythical land was actually the island of Ireland.
Link Cosmic blast is in a class by itself: Bigger than supernova, but smaller than typical gamma-ray burst. A new type of cosmic explosion that occurred late last year could shed light on the death of massive stars, astronomers say.
Link What Dreams Are Made Of: New technology is helping brain scientists unravel the mysteries of the night. Their work could show us all how to make the most of our time in bed.
Link What causes headaches? Dawn A. Marcus, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s department of anesthesiology, explains.
Link Policy Spectrum: Merlin Chowkwanyun interviews Noam Chomsky. Intro: "MIT Professor Noam Chomsky is one of the world's most perceptive social critics. I had the opportunity recently to ask him some questions concerning a range of subject matter. Professor Chomsky's latest book is Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance. Other works, many recently reissued, include American Power and the New Mandarins, Manufacturing Consent, and Deterring Democracy."
Link Earth-like planets may be more rare than thought: Philip Ball reports that, in cosmic terms, our solar system could be special after all.
Link [The Archives] 
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. . monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993.
[more] Booking monochrom: [Europe] [USA] External monochrom links: [monochrom Wikipedia] [monochrom Flickr] [monochrom blip.tv] [monochrom GV] [monochrom Youtube] [monochrom Facebook] [monochrom iTunes] [monochrom Twitter] 
[ P r o j e c t s ] Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / Sector 2 / The Adventure Game Krach der Roboter: Hello World! Slacking is killing the DIY industry (T-Shirt) Carefully Selected Moments / CD, LP Freedom is a whore of a word (T-Shirt) International Year of Polytheism 2007 Santa Claus Vs. Christkindl: A Mobster Battle Kiki and Bubu and The Shift / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Self / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Good Plan / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Feelings / Short film / Short film Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / Sector 1 / The Adventure Game I was a copyright infringement in a previous life (T-Shirt) Firing Squad Euro2008 Intervention I can count every star in the heavens above -- The image of computers in popular music All Tomorrow's Condensations / Puppet show The Redro Loitzl Story / Short film Law and Second Order (T-Shirt) They really kicked you out of the Situationist International? When I was asked to write about new economy Arse Elektronika 2007, 2008, 2009 etc. The Void's Foaming Ebb / Short film The Charcoal Burner / Short film Fieldrecording in Sankt Wechselberg / Short film Campaign For The Abolition Of Personal Pronouns Entertainment (Unterhaltung) / Short film Nicholas Negroponte Memorial Cable Experience the Experience! (West Coast USA/Canada Tour 2005) A Holiday in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Massive Multiplayer Thumb-Wrestling Network Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Metroblogging Every Five Seconds an Inkjet Printer Dies Somewhere 452 x 157 cm² global durability Blattoptera / Art for Cockroaches An attempt to emulate an attempt The Department for Criticism against Globalisation Disney vs. Chrusov / Short film Turning Threshold Countries Into Plows Roböxotica // Festival for Cocktail-Robotics Cracked Foundation For The Fine Arts Oh my God, they use a history which repeats itself! (T-Shirt) Administrating:  . . . . . |
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